Monthly Archives: October 2012

October 15, 2012 · 10:26 am

What’s On Your TV Might Not Be TV

Some information I think is significant came out a couple of weeks ago and I made myself a note to share it.

English: A child watching TV.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry for the delay!  It has to do with yet another tipping point being reached and this one has to do with how we use the “cool fire” that’s the focal point of a room in many homes – the TV.  The folks at NPD Group put out a release that summarized the study:

According to The NPD Group,… over the past year, the number of consumers reporting that the TV is their primary screen for viewing paid and free video streamed from the Web has risen from 33 percent to 45 percent. During the same period, consumers who used a PC as the primary screen for viewing over-the-top (OTT) streamed-video content declined from 48 percent to 31 percent. This shift not only reflects a strong consumer preference for watching TV and movies on big screen TVs, but also coincides with the rapid adoption of Internet-connectible TVs.

In other words, people figured out how to shift the viewing for the desktop to the TV.  Why is this significant?  In my mind, it make Netflix a cable channel in consumers’ minds and not a streaming service.  That’s an example.  Of those viewing online video on the TV, 40 percent use their connected TVs to stream video via Netflix, 12 percent access HuluPlus, and 4 percent connect to Vudu.

Another reason it’s significant is pretty obvious – when the TV is being used to stream web content it’s not being used to watch “traditional” TV, at least not in “live” mode.  Of course, there is a ton of time-shifting going on and it’s a lot of what we think of as “TV” that’s being shifted and watched.  Still, one wonders how this affects what used to be the fundamental underpinning of the business: the ability to deliver ad impressions to marketers.

Unless you’re a live-sports addict (ahem…), cord cutting is rapidly becoming an option for a lot of people   While this might be another nail in the coffin of the traditional PC (hello tablets), I think it’s also something to which TV service providers need pay attention (which I know they are).  The TV is a screen, just like the PC, the tablet, or the mobile device.  It’s becoming just as content-provider agnostic as are those devices.

Do you watch web video on your TV?  How?  Apple TV?  XBox?  Own a web-enabled TV?  Have you cut the cord?  What’s that like?

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October 12, 2012 · 9:14 am

Walking First

Foodie Friday again, thank goodness.

English: Apprentice. Man and boy making shoes.

Apprentice. Man and boy making shoes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we end the week, let’s talk about the professional kitchen, which may be one of the last great bastions of the apprenticeship system.  Escoffier invented the notion of the “Kitchen Brigade.” This system is still used in many restaurants and kitchens and forms the basis of the hierarchy in which people learn.  Typically, aspiring chefs take on the most menial tasks like peeling and prepping vegetables before they’re allowed to have a “real” station.  What’s going on in that world is a business point as well.

Culinary schools have changed the apprenticeship dynamic.  Now applicants come to kitchens feeling as if they’ve been through the grind of the line.  Putting aside having never been under the stress of a real dinner service for days at a time, the reality is that they are “book-smart” and the real world is a very different place.  They want to run before they really know how to walk.  This from a respected chef, Mark Vetri:

I once had a young cook who used to bring in modern Spanish cookbooks because he wanted to make things like mango caviar eggs and chocolate soil. I told him, “Hey, how about you learn how to blanch a goddamn carrot first, cook meat to a correct temperature, clarify a broth and truss a chicken? Once you can do these things then, and only then, should you try to learn these other techniques.” Trust me when I tell you that José Andrés is a master of the basics. You should strive to be one too.

This isn’t limited to the professional kitchen.  If you’ve ever managed younger people, many of them think they know the business thoroughly because they have an MBA or a couple of years in an office.  The reality is that much of what we teach as managers are basic skills that either aren’t taught at all in schools or are given a week’s worth of attention.  Listening, politicking, presentation skills, office culture, and the knowledge specific to an industry are generally not areas in which young folks come prepared.  Try to tell them that!

I was managing people (some older than me) when I was 23.  I was a department head by 25.  In retrospect, I was lucky not to have screwed up more often than I did because I was learning as I went and much of what I was learning were basic skills.  As in the kitchen, learning the building blocks of the industry and business frees you up later on to be able to do anything.  Walk first!

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October 11, 2012 · 9:30 am

Crappy Consultants

The screed today hits close to home since I want to throw a little sunlight on something going on in the consulting world.  While it’s been on my mind for a bit I read a piece this morning called How Social Media Consultants Dupe Their Corporate Clients from Dave Copeland of ReadWriteWeb that brought it front and center.  The piece talks about how a friend of Dave’s was underwhelmed by a consultant brought in to get the company up to speed with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and the rest.  Not only was the presentation the consultant made stunningly simplistic, but it may have been wrong.  As the article put it:

…the company has little digital expertise. That leaves it open to exploitation by so-called social media experts who take a one-size-fits-all approach to every client. These consultants often bill tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars before anyone realizes there is little or no return on the investment.

Amen.  As I’m out meeting with potential clients I often run into the work of some “consultant” who knows how to post on Facebook but doesn’t understand how Facebook is used as part of a business.  Forget knowing about the social graph – these folks don’t have a clue about asking the most important question – why social media in the first place?  After all, it’s not right for every business and there certainly is no standard implementation that’s going to work across the board.

I’ve had prospective clients hand me the “white paper” some other consultant did that was nothing more than a document grabbed off the web.  I’ve had another client think that someone had built them a solution when all they were doing was using a white-label provider and marking up the cost.  In each case the warning signs were there – the person they’d hired didn’t have a lot of business experience (it’s hard to claim a ton of social media experience – it’s s new medium!) and treated social as just another marketing megaphone.

It’s hard to convince anyone that there is an ROI to social, especially since it’s very resource intensive if done well.  It requires someone who can digest a 360 degree view of the business and align social with other marketing efforts, including the analytics to evaluate it all.  The charlatans identified in the article hurt clients.  They hurt folks like me who have to battle against their failures to get hired (usually to clean up a mess).  They hurt the industry.  I wish they’d go away – maybe a little sunlight will scare them off.

Have you had an experience with someone like this?

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